2009: A year in review, June

Two events of large and massive significance happened in June - the Apple WWDC took place as did the launch of the iPhone 3GS and the legend that was Michael Jackson passed away.

Whereas the Internet was on tenterhooks as the Apple Store went offline for Phil Schiller's keynote, the entire Web buckled under the strain as reports came out that Jacko had been taken to hospital. Apart from the flash mob moonwalks in commemoration of the great man, the other huge effect was in digital downloads with the artist taking all top three places of the top 40 chart due to a mass of digital downloads.

The extent of the Steve Jobs' near miss was also revealed with the news that the Apple icon had received a liver transplant earlier in the year and after the launch of the 3GS, the 13- and 17-inch MacBook Pros and Safari 4, we also heard that the supremo at Cupertino was back to work as well.

The arrival of the iPhone may have meant a calm for Apple, but it landed O2 in all sorts of trouble after the UK operator decided to deal with the threat to their mobile internet dongle service by clumsily deciding to charge 3GS users a £15-per-month tethering charge on top of what they would already be paying. #O2Fail was the cry on Twitter right up until the company sold out of iPhones.

If you couldn't stomach the costs, June was an excellent month for other handsets with the launch of the HTC Hero, the Nokia E72, the OmniaPro, Omnia II, Pixon12 and Jet all from Samsung, the launch of the Palm Pre in America and leaks and announcements on the Xperia X2, the Acer smartphone range and a Twitter phone from INQ.

Acer was also busy in its computer division with news of Android laptops to launch along with a 3D notebook for later in the year too. Windows 7 was confirmed for 22 October and with the news came more details of hardware support. Archos also capitalised on the announcement with word on a range of netbooks and a 9-inch media tablet that would run the new OS. Samsung also impressed us all by coming up with a 32GB RAM on a stick module. If that didn't get you, then the 1cm mains plug had us all agog.

The other event to normally take centre stage in June is E3, which, this time, was rather overshadowed by the subsequent news this year. That said, it was an impressive one nonetheless with the announcements of Project Natal and Sony's motion sensor to keep the other two consoles up to speed with the Wii. We also heard of Left For Dead 2, Crysis 2, Halo: ODST, whilst China banned the multi-million dollar industry that is gold farming. Plus there was also the launch of the PSP Go later in the month after some leaks which frustrated Sony.

As it happens, the Japanese giant wasn't alone in its distaste for the power of gossip on the Internet with both Nikon and Olympus getting the same treatment before the official arrival of the D3000, D300s and the very pretty EP-1 micro four thirds system.

Whereas leaks may have proved unpopular in June, piracy was all the rage. The Pirate Bay was bought for $4.8 million by a Swedish firm, the Fleet Foxes attributed their success to illegal downloads and the Pirate Party managed to get three seats in the European Parliament representing Germany and Sweden.

Elsewhere Twitter verified accounts went live, Facebook launched user name URLS, YouTube reached 1 billion streams per day and web 2.0 became the millionth word in the English language. On top of that the Church of Scientology was banned from Wikipedia, BT promised a £10 million internet speed boost in the UK and Google Earth was used by thieves to steal Koi from garden ponds.

Finally, in the comings and goings, MySpace axed staff, Setanta went bust and Kodak retired Kodachrome, but the good news was for Pleo and the Woolworths website, both of which were saved.

Dan's love affair with tech began in 1985 with his first computer, the Enterprise 128. After a psychology and zoology degree at university, a career on stage and screen he joined Pocket-lint in 2009. Dan has now moved on to pastures new.